


a piece for me

by smokefall



Category: Do You Remember the First Time - Song
Genre: F/F, First Love, First Time, Growing Up, Reconciliation, Teen Angst, The 90s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 23:20:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1797055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokefall/pseuds/smokefall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>I don't care what you're doing</i>
  <br/>
  <i>I don't care if you screw him</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Just as long as you leave a piece for me oh yeah yeah yeah</i>
</p><p>In which teenagers are stupid and adults are also stupid but there's some glory in that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a piece for me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thursday_Next](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thursday_Next/gifts).



The first time you occupied the same physical space as me was an accident: the two last seats left at the back of French, a flat Wednesday afternoon, a hesitation to be the first to speak turning into a conversation carried out entirely in increasingly elaborate defacements of our worksheets. You drew grotesque embellishments on the cartoon body of your gurning label-me man; I added summery accessories. The only thing you said was 'Oh my god,' then a stifled laugh. Neither of us got any points on the body parts quiz - but I remember the shape of the man, garlanded and enlipsticked in highlighter, as if he had been branded on the back of my eyes.

There were conversations that featured words after that, but more often it was in pictures and music that we spoke. The margins of your exercise books grew a menagerie of creatures in red and blue biro, outrageous speech bubbles blooming between their teeth, lyrics haloing their heads. Lunchtimes were spent joined at the discman. 'Fucking listen to this,' you said, and shoved a headphone into my ear. Bikini Kill, Rebel Girl. _I know I wanna take you home, I wanna try on your clothes oh_.

It felt like the universe had just turned itself inside out.

I wanted it to be my life forever. Even the nights after the fights, when I sat up drawing your stupid face in my diary and crying. And the penny still hadn't dropped.

They weren't close events, not at all, first love and first heartbreak. There were years between, but I only ever realised the first had happened when the second did. Your birthday, and I was leaving for the seaside that morning. I tried to come over, a glitter-crusted scrapbook full of superheroes and dead rock stars, assembled after bedtime over a course of months, tucked under my arm. On the way out I stole a handful of almost-fresh flowers from the vase in the kitchen.

You didn't answer my text til I was on the bus, and all you said was _don't bother, I'm hardly awake_ , and the rush of fury was so sudden and all-consuming I nearly yelled. _What the fuck,_ I thought, and then _Oh. Fuck._

I spent that week in Brighton playing in the arcades and eating vinegary chips and deliriously, bone-deeply hating you. Everything I did, I did to spite you. I haunted the lanes, eyed up shop windows for things you’d love, didn’t buy them for you. Bought myself red drainpipe jeans and an old blue velvet blazer, smirked to myself in the shop mirror and thought what a pity it was you weren’t there to see me. I wrote you a postcard and let the wind snatch it out to sea. _Your lips have ruined my rational mind, and I would have loved you through twenty apocalypses_ , it said. _But you're a self-absorbed cunt with nothing real to say and I won't fall for any of it again._ I walked back to the hotel with the wind pushing bodily against me, feeling triumphant.

That was the first time I got over you. (And, like a lot of our firsts, I didn't do it very well).

And then - years after, again - there was _it_ , the proverbial first time, when I had your skin between my teeth at last, at last, and all I could think about was how you'd be on a train tomorrow and thank god I wouldn't have to try finding things to say to you any more, and how was it that I always forgot that _you_ were kind of shit at saying things to _me_ too, and maybe god maybe if we'd got here a year ago it would have been perfect would have been sweet and oh _jesus_ I said as I shook against you, and we breathed hot and hard and got off like we meant it but I knew that you knew that it was fucking over. The closest we got to _sorry about everything_ , the closest to _have a nice life_.

And years after even that, we sit, down to the dregs of our beers but not finishing them. We've run out of news to tell, and I don't dare press you for more details of your dismal lovelife. I might say something stupid. The jukebox has been playing the same five songs in different orders for about an hour, but changing it would require getting up. You say you want to go home, and I say I should go the shop before it closes anyway, but just like in the beginning neither of us is quite ready to make the first move.

'You'll be late,' I say, and you glower at me, and your lips are still pure ruination. So it's me that pushes away after all, me that turns to go with a forced 'we should do this again,'; you who mutters 'yeah, sure,' and either you've given up for good or you're biting down as hard as I am.

I have a plan in my head, and it involves fish fingers and whiskey and comedy repeats on TV. What I find myself doing is digging under my bed for a dusty box of blank CDs, and sitting up making a fucking mix. I end up listening through the free _Riot Grrrl's Not Dead!_ compilations I downloaded and never bothered with, and there are some fucking _gems_ \- I know you'll like Not Right. A bit of Suede and Hole for old times' sake, and some angry folk anthems that you might love or might hate but I hope that you'll _get_. I catch myself wishing I had some tipp-ex with which to scrawl an obscure mix title on the finished product.

The truth, I guess, is that I think a lot about your life being bullshit and don't look much at my own. This is a kind of exorcism, a kind of courtship, a kind of ludicrous self-realisation.

Whatever I'm doing (and I'm really not sure) - I ought to save a piece for you.

**Author's Note:**

> So this song has always been obviously about lesbians to me, and overblown teenage romance drama is absolutely better with a heaping of 90s nostalgia. I hope it was good for you, dear recip.


End file.
